Wednesday, 23 March 2011

Not a boring budget for me

I just need to say; wow do I hate George Osborne. What magnificent ***** he is.

People always say your paranoid, 'they' are not out to get you...

Well Osborne, who I have never been slow to criticise, has his revenge.

Today's budget has cost me £10,00 on the nose thank so to the collapse in share prices of our North Sea oil companies. Such companies have been doing really well of late, discovering bigger fields and eeking out a longer future for the UK as an oil producer - all the time with 50%+ of the profit going straight to the Treasury.

Sadly in recent days our lunatic attack on Libya has pushed up the price of oil, along with the results of our failed Middle East foreign policy. So to help the Government have decided to take a couple of pence off a litre of fuel by taxing our own oil industry (not Gaddafi's obviously!). It is a real budget gimmick too, petrol is up over 40p since last summer so a couple of pence neither here nor there.

The huge tax rise has really affected the City view of the smaller North Sea oil companies though.

And for me, this is the tipping point, they took child benefit away, I welcomed it. They put my taxes up to 65% by taking away my personal allowance. I grumbled but put up with it. They raised VAT, sigh. They allowed inflation to run away and I moaned a little. They even attacked my trading by upping capital gains tax and I was ok, because it was to pay the deficit.

But this time, this is it, now the Government have taken to smashing directly my portfolio. It is a purely personal attack on one of my last attempts to keep earning. Well I am never supporting the Tories again. Whatever I try to do the Government rob me; once you add in VAT, council tax, petrol and insurance taxes I am paying directly over 2/3rds of income to the Government.

CU - re your general comments about taxation - it was always going to be us peasants that paid the get-out-of-jail-card for the bank corps boardrooms, and for the politicians, and for the EU, and for the government spendthrifts, and for ....

Sorry, but I call bullshit on that one. Top rate income tax is 50%, NI on earnings in the 50% bracket is 2%. That gives you a marginal rate of 52% not 65%. The actual overall rate is something like 45%. High. Too high. I don't like it either, but it is not 65%.

Plus your industry and your portfolio and your home value have done extremely well out of QE which is a tax on the frugal.

Plus DFID is max 0.7% of GDP so even if you think that every penny of it is wasted it's not going to make a massive dent in your personal finances one way or the other. In fact not all of it is handing out grain to grateful Ethiopians but important strategic things which may or may not help our foreign policy interests.

They are all dicks. Luckily I sold XEL this morning because I made such a bad call on Sainsburys' and took the XEL profits to keep me up on the weeks trading after the hit on SBRY.

I took their personal attacks on the chin because they were going to reduce housing benefit and they weren't that horrible Scottish geezer.

I'm not moving abroad, I'm, gonna sell all my DVD's, my TV etc and stash all my fishing gear in the evidence store at work then move back into the youth hostel for a tenner a night with no bills or council tax and live out of a suitcase.

I'm fed up of paying half my income to the landlord. I'm just going to put the £300 a month I save in my spread betting account and try and get stinking rich betting on wars and earthquakes and stuff.

Blue - err...my tax rate is 40%, plus 65% for the bit that is PAYE over 100k, plys NI. This is about 50%. Of this money that I take home I pay VAT, Council txx, Insurance tax, APD, petrol tax, to mention just the large ones; they easily equate to 15% of earnings - VAT applies to about 40% of my spending (not including petrol)so that alone is worht 8% and Council tax another 2%

EK - I would like the government to guarantee all my investments and make them into a one-way bet too!

CU - I'm still struggling to understand how you manage a marginal rate of 65% when the top rate of income tax is 50% and NI in that bracket is 2% but then I am a mere middle-income earner so obviously too stupid to understand life in the top percentile.

I am not saying that taxes are low or even acceptably high, but I don't know what you thought George could have done much different.

Anyway, enjoy Switzerland or Singapore. I'm sure they are both very interesting lively places to live.

@CUI just hope Portugal does not "save" it's citizens in the same way Ireland has "saved" it it's citizens :(

On tax I agree with that rate it may even be too low. No one thinks about the fact they are paying taxes like fuel duty and VAT & Council tax with tax-paid money! Throw in local govt. parking charges + various parking fines (All taxes) Drinking, smoking, heating, lighting - anything actually except a few books and basic food.@S_LPro gambler seems the way to go - no tax, at least initially :).

Blue Eyes - DfID may "only" account for 0.7% of GDP (which is 1.4% of Government spending, which is about 2% of tax revenue) but it is still a lot of money. When you add in the fact that government aid to foreign countries actually undermines their economies, it is sensible to close DfID.

Emergency short term aid for disasters - yes. Perpetual "development" aid - no. Especially as we (ie the EU) fail to trade fairly particularly with Africa.

The government spends about 45% of GDP (but is borrowing 10%) and rising ...

So you know your tax take is 35% generally.

A pensioner on MIG will pay very little tax - possibly the only tax will be 8% on fuel

A person paying 'higher' rates of tax pays less than 40% in total generally as the tax system is progressive, but this ignores the effect of ees ni. If I divide my monthly net by gross I seem to be paying about 42%.

CU mentions other places where the govt extracts your money. Employers NI is one at about 10%.

Another good one is VAT at 20%

Even better is the tax on booze/petrol/cigs.

If CU is gifted/valuable enough to be paying the top rate of 50%, smokes, drinks, drives a big car and eats out a lot, it is likely that 65% of total income disappearing is on the low side.

This sounds bad/unfair, but the alternative is that someones grandfather basically does not get enough to keep warm next winter - especially as noted above the DFiD budget is ring-fenced.

"the alternative is that someones grandfather basically does not get enough to keep warm next winter"

Which will happen anyway, given the massive energy price increases to pay for stationary windmills and to give some companies profits on their carbon credits. Old people don't generate an awful lot of internal heat (once you become too frail to take much exercise, and spend a lot of time sat down) and need warm rooms.